Kens Pen

Email marketing is The Convergent Marketing digital corrolary to Direct mail. Direct mail has been one of the most effective forms of reaching potential customers for a long time. Often commercial mail is viewed as a nuisance, but at the same time it has proven to be a cost-effective and valuable tool to marketers. And if it is done right, the recipient actually looks forward to receiving the marketing message. read more »

If you are a convergent marketer, or are familiar with the things convergent marketers go through, you know that convergence marketing requires a ton of text manipulation.

How many times have you received text from a client that needs to be transferred to another format, like flash or HTML Email, but it is in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, or it comes from some other source that is filled with all kinds of weird formatting and markup?

It happens to me on every job, no matter how I request the copy be formatted or how files should be named. Well, I have found some killer resources to deal with these everyday problems in the life of digital marketing professionals. And best of all, they are free! You can download or access them right now, free of charge!

Without further ado…

4 indispensable text tools for convergent marketing

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Everybody’s talking about swine flu! This small outbreak has enjoyed more buzz than Miley Cyrus eloping with Amy Winehouse…online forums are jumping, the blogosphere is lit up, and digital billboards in Times Square are blaring! The television media is talking about swine flu 20 times an hour, per channel, at the minimum.

I am not saying that it isn’t important to know about the swine flu outbreak, or that it should not be talked about, but when it comes to something like alarming people about infective diseases, why can’t we just have the facts and leave out the hype? read more »

How do you know if you are right for the field of Convergence Marketing?

At his or her heart, a professional who is suited to be a Convergent Marketer, is a person who needs to know. A lot of Convergent Marketing pros started out as one man bands – the “I can do that!” girl or guy.

A typical career arc of the Convergent Marketing Professional is as follows: A print designer who is proficient in desktop publishing has the opportunity to read more »

Do you believe in Convergent Marketing? No? I guess you don’t believe the sky is blue either. Get with it gramps!

Convergent Marketing is all around you. It’s in every commercial website, it’s on your mobile phone, it is also in your inbox. Pretty much every place there is a screen is an opportunity to interact with potential customers.

One of the interesting aspects of successful Convergent Marketing campaigns is that they can engage and interact with the customer while making a sale.

A great example is the phenomenon of “viral marketing“. read more »

Google’s autocomplete feature can be invaluable to the Convergent Marketer, as it is tied into “Google Suggest”, a tool that helps you figure out how people are searching.

Yesterday it just went out on me. As I typed the drop-down menu with the search suggestions would not show up. Here is how I figured out how to fix it… read more »

Why do people who could not possibly begin to do the technical task they hired you to do, try to tell you how to do your business?

Why do people hire designers when they have no clue about what they want, then become upset with the result?

There is a true need in the industry of Convergent Marketing for Project Managers who have actually done the type of work and truly understand what they are asking to be done. read more »

We’re all used to CAPTCHAS, the little images embedded in web pages that have randomly-generated characters. You must retype the captcha text into a form field before you can register, or comment or do something along those lines.

I think they are a hell of an invention even if they are annoying. read more »